Essential oils

This article deals with the analytical characteristics of essential oils.

The most logical classification would have been by botanical family, following the order of the classic works:

• cryptogams or flowerless plants, which include fungi (or thallophytes), bryophytes, algae, lichens, ferns (or vascular cryptogams);

• phanerogams or plants with flowers and seeds, which are divided into gymnosperms with naked ovules and angiosperms with ovules enclosed in an ovary.

  Another classification could have taken into account the organ of the plant treated, i.e. flowers, leaves, aerial parts, trunk, bark, roots, rhizomes, fruits, seeds, exudates...

  Our classification is the result of a compromise that takes into account the main constituent (linalool, linalyl acetate, citral, citronellal...) or the group of constituents of an essential oil (with phenols, monoterpenic compounds, sesquiterpenic compounds: hydrocarbons, alcohols, ketones). In some cases, we use the classification of botanical families: Hesperidae, Apiaceae. Sometimes it's the plant's exudate that's taken into consideration.